Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 11, 2025

Evanescent Field Based Photoacoustics: Optical Property Evaluation at Surfaces
Published on: July 26, 2016
Emission of Acoustic Point Sources near an Interface
Rong Zhou1, Beibei Li1, Liying Zhang1
1East China Normal University, State Key Laboratory of Precision Spectroscopy, Shanghai 200062, China.
Abstract:
The emission of point sources is a cornerstone of wave-based physics, underpinning applications in optics and acoustics. While optical theories for point sources near interfaces are well established, a unified acoustic framework, modeled after its optical counterpart to provide cohesive insights into emission behaviors, remains underdeveloped. In this Letter, we extend the optical framework to acoustics, focusing on point sources near solid-fluid interfaces. Our theory predicts far-field patterns with richer features than their optical analogs, including multiple peaks and nonmonotonic supercritical emission dependence on source depth. For circularly polarized sources, we uncover depth-dependent transverse spin angular momentum in leaky Rayleigh waves, revealing opposite directions for distinct peaks. These findings shed new light on polarization related phenomena in acoustic near fields, bridging optics and acoustics while advancing the understanding of wave-matter interactions.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Echo
Imagine the sound is reflected back to the ears. Assuming that the source is very close to the human, the difference between hearing the two sounds—the emitted sound and the reflected sound—may be more than the minimum time for perceiving distinct sounds. If this is the case,...
Atomic Emission Spectroscopy: Interference
Sound Intensity
Shock Waves
When the source's speed approaches the speed of sound, constructive interference between successive wavefronts emitted by the source occurs immediately behind it. Initially, scientists believed that this constructive interference would result in such high...
Sound Waves: Interference
Interference: Path Lengths
Two special sources may be considered when they are in phase. This can be easily achieved by feeding the two sources from the same source. An example would be synchronizing the two speakers by feeding them with the same source, such as the sound waves produced by a tuning fork. This setup ensures that the two sources have the same frequency and are...

